In 2012, artist Marco Cianfanelli created a sculpture as a reminder of the fiftieth anniversary of Nelson Mandela’s arrest in 1962, and subsequent 27-year imprisonment.

I’m a little tardy in discovering this, but I’m glad I did—even though I’ve only seen it online.

The sculpture stands just across the road from where Mandela was arrested, 90 kilometers south of Durban, in South Africa’s Midlands.

The sculpture comprises 50 anchored steel columns, each between 6.5 and 9 meters high. The columns, which are intended to rust over time, symbolize the prison bars that held Nelson Mandela, before he went on to become president of South Africa.

Viewed up close, the sculpture appears to be an aggregation of steel rods. But, amazingly, as you step back to a distance of 35 meters, the 50 linear vertical units lining up to create the illusion of a flat image of Mandela in profile.

Cianfanelli describes the sculpture this way:

“This represents the momentum gained in the struggle through the symbolic of Mandela’s capture.

The 50 columns represent the 50 years since his capture, but they also suggest the idea of many making the whole; of solidarity.

It points to an irony as the political act of Mandela’s incarceration cemented his status as an icon of struggle, which helped ferment the groundswell of resistance, solidarity and uprising, bringing about political change and democracy.”

I’m sure the accompanying images don’t fully do justice to this amazing work of art.

But here are images  for those of us who will probably not get to see it live.

The post An amazing tribute to Nelson Mandela appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I’m going to make a guilty confession here: During much of his  lifetime, Nelson Mandela mostly existed at the periphery of my political awareness. When he was in the headlines, I, read about him and admired his courage and power to inspire.  In high school, I wrote a term paper about apartheid–I still have it somewhere–and I remember that it was one of my best research papers, because it made me aware of what was going on in South Africa at the time [the mid-1960’s, when our own Civil Rights movement was something I actually was aware of.] But I’m not sure my high-school term paper even mentioned Mandela [what an oversight!], and Mandela’s struggle and journey was not at the center of my consciousness the way it was for many other people.

I’m not proud of that fact, but that’s the way it is. Later, when my awareness expanded to include issues farther afield from my own back yard, I learned a lot more about Mandela,  and the amazing transformation he helped bring about in South Africa, eventually shunning violence in favor of reconciliation. Unfortunately, the Reagan Administration  officially listed him as a terrorist–a status not rescinded until the administration of George W. Bush in 2008. (That’s one of the few things Bush got right.)

It could be a long time before another Nelson Mandela comes along. And I’m not sure–in our current situation,  where negativity and tear-down politics are the norm–if we’d even recognize, or give a Mandela the chance to emerge, if one showed up.

Here’s a gallery of editorial cartoon tributes to Nelson Mandela:

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The post Political cartoonists pay tribute to Nelson Mandela appeared first on Occasional Planet.